The Floor After

Days 4 & 5 Countdown of 10...

So after a particularly gruelling weekend, we have a beautiful brand new floor made entirely from the old wood wormy floor, two rented sanders and osmo polyx floor oil (and a little sweat, blood and tears).

Post sanding, pre oiling... You can see how the slivers that have been hammered into the gaps and chiselled off have a pleasing different colour to them.

Then the amber oil started to go on with our special oil brush... Look how the colour changes. 

I'm not going to lie - I did not do all of the floor oiling myself. Just the bit in the pictures.

Next weekend, we'll start getting in there. Eep.

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Wood Works

Day 3 (of 10) countdown: Wood

Why does the name Edward Wood Wood have so many d's?

Because otherwise he would be called Ewar Woo Woo. 

A colleague told me that particularly hilarious joke yesterday to stop me from talking about wood. I've got house hysteria. It's all I can think and talk about now we've entered the 7 day count down to move date. 

Today I want to show you the stair progress from start to finish. They're finally installed with the cupboard below completed. Yet to be painted and yet to have the newels put on to the banisters but in! This is what they looked like from start to finish. Oh and as always if anyone needs the deets of a great chippie, just shout. His name is Peter and he is a gentle giant :-)

So when we bought the house, the previous owners had at some point installed these spiral stairs which we sadly had to part with because you couldn't get anything other than flatpack up the stairs - not cool and they were insufficiently supporting the second floor - even less cool. They were beauties but nothing on my brand new ones, especially as it meant opening up a larger hole in the landing which lets in so much more lovely light into the living room as you can see from the pictures. 

The main body of the stairs when they arrived. The rest were built on site... 

Aren't they going to be lovely!

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The floor: Before

Day 2 countdown (8 days to go): Floors...

My lovely boyfriend who I will be eternally grateful to has been spending the last couple of days prepping the floor for sanding. Downstairs, we got an incredible bargain on some lovely solid oak floorboards. Upstairs we pulled back the estate-agent-fast-sell carpet to reveal some original planks and got very excited. The excitement was short lived when I found that to get the entire thing done would cost near to £1000 and given that I'm running seriously over budget, that just was not an option. 

The reason that my floors in particular would have been pretty expensive is the amount of work it will take to prepare them before the sanding and treating can even begin. They have tacks from the pointless carpet throughout them and very old protruding nails coming out of the edges. It takes hours to remove the tiny carpet tacks and is horrible work because they're so tiny that you tend to bash as much thumb as floor. Robbie is going through all of this pain alone, whilst I continue to paint. I cannot take any credit.

The other reason is that there are large gaps between some of our floorboards which will be drafty and also painful for stubbed toes unless something is done about them. The large gaps can be filled with the standard sawdust resin mix, but they won't actually be sealed up by this so instead we decided to buy some slivers of wood to pane down and hammer into them. This means that by the time you get to sanding, you end up with one flush and draught proof surface. It is also far more pleasing to the eye. If we were to have paid for this to be done professionally, it would have cost the earth but doing it yourself just means buying slivers (ours came to £100 total) and then a lot of time and pain. Thank you Robbie.

We are by no means there yet. We still have a whole room to complete before the sander arrives on Friday and then (according to all sources) the real pain begins. By the end of the weekend though we have to be done. Then it's just a matter of buying the wax or the varnish and finishing off. Bring on move day!

Please let there be a 'The Floor: After' post soon! 

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Light up my life

The lights are on, the heating works, there is clear water running from the taps and I have stairs instead of a hole in the ceiling. Bring on the 10 day count down. 

Today: lights.

After a grand total of 56 hours of painting so far and still going, I'm still smiling because I can finally see some proper progress. Our electrician finished last week - the last few days of that were painful to say the least but we finally got through it without being too ripped off. Message me if you want details of pitfalls and a recommendation of a great person to work with too. I'm always happy to help.

What we had to do: 

Rewire the house the whole way through to make it safe to actually live in.

Put in a new thermostat

Put in an extractor fan in the bathroom

Put in new switches throughout the house

Put spot lights into the living room and the kitchen

Put lights on the roof terrace and add an outdoor socket for partaaays

Add wall lights through the living room

Put under unit lighting into the kitchen 

It turns out I have rather expensive taste in lights - who knew? I browsed the usual sites for hours only to find myself emailing a particularly interiors obsessed friend with a shortlist of things I thought 'weren't hideous'. After she replied informing me that I was in fact incorrect and they were hideous afterall, I gave up on these and started looking further afield. 

A long Pinterest session later, and I knew that what I really loved was antique 30s French factory lights.  What I also knew was that unless you get super lucky, these cost you approximately £250 a pop. So then I started making my own luck on Ebay...

I'm not going to lie. This was a painstakingly long process during which I may have been slightly unbearable. However I came away with a mix and match pair of swan necks with green enamel shades in very different states of restoration. These had to be rewired and fitted but actually look lovely together.

I later found my third, which was to sit on a different wall. This one is smaller so no one knocks their head as they go between the kitchen and the garden but has the same green enamel shade and a distinctive gold swan neck fixture. Lovely... 

To complete the living room, we needed something that would go at the base of the stairs. Rather than getting another of the same kind, I went for the same period and goose neck style but with an exposed bulb. This points up the stairwell and just kind of makes sense in the space, despite being different to the others. It will also cast a light the whole way upstairs when they're not on at night, which is helpful as you can turn it off again from the landing. 

The picture of it in situ is at the top of this post. Here's the one from the listing I bought it on. In total I spent about £30-£40 per light - far, far less than was being asked by professional sellers. The gold baby one was only £8 however which massively brought down the average price!

For the upstairs I needed pendant lights that would go with the overall effect of downstairs. I fell in love with many super expensive bell jar lights until I finally found the exact same shape, but with thicker glass (a nicer effect) from Japan. I snapped up this bargain immediately and then fell in love with this more cutesy version for the bedroom. Well, when you're paying for something to be imported from Japan, you may as well get more than one eh. 

 

Bell jar light here, bird light here

Bathroom lights come in especially hideous form, so it took me ages to not find this one. I sent my mum  a shortlist and she replied with these which she found herself on Amazon - thanks mum. I then had to find something that would look nice with them for the ceiling and which met Zone 1 and 2 bathroom light regulations (near the shower means zone 1.) The solution was simple and pleasing and I was done!

Find the Amazon light here and the Endon light here

Please excuse the hideous walls - they are freshly plastered though are slowly starting to be painted. It's a pleasure doing it with the lights actually on. Check out how bright my spotlights are in the kitchen!

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Windows, Tiles and Rubbish Piles

So the big move date is only three weeks away and despite having no plumbing or electricity or... floor, toilet and kitchen... I will be in on time.  This is my best staying calm and looking out of the window whilst contemplating that face. I am at least looking out of one of my brand new timber sash windows as supplied by Camden Box Frame who make beautiful wooden windows and can be found just next to Camden Road Station. I will do a full write up on them and their newly expanding workshop once I'm in and these are painted (for now, please rest assured that they will not end up this filthy!). 

I also have tiles in my bathroom - which as my little bro kindly pointed out, currently looks like a Byron interior - not exactly what I was going for or what I hope to end up with but I'll take that for now. 

Slowly but surely though, this hole is starting to turn into a house and I could not be more excited in the few moments that I let myself be. I will also write up the tiles in full next week once I can post them with the floor. 

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